Jules Sebastian on her brother’s suicide and life as the wife of a popstar

Jules Sebastian has opened up about how she was on her honeymoon with her popstar husband Guy when she learned her brother had fallen victim to mental health.

Jules and Guy Sebastian with their children Archer and Hudson.

It’s a matter of record: the day Guy Sebastian won the first Australian Idol back in 2003, everything changed for the bubbly, brown-eyed 22-year-old.

Less well known, is the life-altering impact that transition from potential talent to popstar had on Guy’s girlfriend of eight years, Julie Egan, the Adelaide girl who met Guy when they were teenagers at the Paradise Community Church in Adelaide’s northeastern suburbs.

“One day, nobody knows you and you’re going about your life and, literally what seems like the next day, the entire country knows who you are – it’s a massive shift,” says Jules, as she would become known to the nation.

It is a process she talks about with candour in her newly released book, Tea & Honesty, written after she was approached by publishing house Murdoch Books in 2019.

Each of the 12 chapters reveals the victories and tragedies of a life lived in the limelight and the often difficult lessons learned along the way, much of it unknown to any but her family and closest confidants.

Perhaps the most difficult chapters in the writing were about the death of older brother Andrew, who took his own life soon after Guy and Jules married in 2008, as well as her struggles and self-doubt after the birth of her sons, Archer and Hudson. But these were issues she refused to shy away from for good reason.

Jules Sebastian with children Archer and Hudson.

“I wrote down those 12 chapters plus a few more and then I chose those 12 to commit to and I knew in amongst that were going to be those stories,” she says from her Sydney home.

“What got me over the line was the hope that somebody, somewhere, reading this book, will think ‘Someone else has been through this, someone else has felt these feelings, I’m not alone in this gigantic life’.

“I know that people sometimes think of public figures as unicorns who have this charmed life, and nothing ever goes wrong and it’s all parties and red-carpet events. Even I do it. I put people up on their pedestals and think they’re amazing. Beyonce would never cry, right?

“It’s just not the case and that was really the hope of opening up and being a bit more vulnerable and honest with things I have experienced.”

Andrew’s suicide, while Guy and Jules were still on their European honeymoon, is the basis for the chapter titled “Grief”, and how Jules learned to cope with the crushing and unexpected loss of a beloved brother. “The last memory I have of my big brother Andrew was him doing the caterpillar on the dance floor at my wedding,” Jules writes.

“Our wedding was magical … indeed the highest of highs. It was the day I married my childhood sweetheart.”

The news came several days later to their hotel in Rome, instigating a nightmare 48-hour return journey navigating clueless fans still congratulating them on their nuptials.

Guy and Jules Sebastian on their wedding day in 2008.

“It would be hard to describe how quickly the descent was from sheer joy to utter grief,” she writes. “My internal questions as I stood with the sweet wellwishers were: ‘Don’t you know what has just happened? My brother is dead! How are you just walking around like nothing is wrong?’”

Jules’ way of navigating through the worst of the pain is something she learned early in life and a pattern now oft repeated to good effect. Reach out and share your pain and confusion with the people you trust.

Learn what they have to teach you from their experiences, think about why you are feeling and behaving the way you are, and find a way to move forward. “Even though I have experienced deep loss, I still have hope. I still think that life, and all that is within it, is beautiful. My mind is fixed on what I do have,” she says.

When she was thrust into the limelight as Guy’s girlfriend, Jules very quickly had to work out who she was and how she would fit into this new world, indeed, new life.

“I had to figure that out fast because it was public and I hadn’t figured it out at that point,” she says. “I think everyone at some point has to go through that identity figuring-out process (but) it was just more forced upon me, I suppose, and more fast-tracked in those moments.”

It wasn’t “Meghan Markle status coming at me”, the now 41-year-old explains, but something she had to wrestle with as the world bombarded Guy with attention.

“It was happening to Guy, it wasn’t really happening to me, so he’s had to deal with that very fast turnaround of life,” she says. “It literally was a different life, it felt like overnight – (our old life) was just uprooted immediately.

Guy and Jules in Sydney in 2004.

Jules says much of the book is based around the lessons she learned from guests on her regular, successful podcast, Tea with Jules, which evolved out of personal conversations with the many varied people she met in her life with Guy and building a career as a personal stylist for photo shoots and celebrity events.

“I’d find myself in conversations or I’d be working on set with someone … I’d think ‘this person’s great and I’ve learnt so much from just this half-hour conversation, I wonder if anyone else would be interested?’,” she says. “I think my very first guest was (makeup artist) Rae Morris. She set the tone for the show because I asked her something and she just went there, about her brother and his addiction.

“I wanted it to be all those behind-the-scenes moments, the struggles and challenges. You see the shininess of everyone’s life but there’s a person in there, living life, and … it’s not shiny all the time, nobody’s perfect.”

Through it all has been her enduring relationship with Guy, the person Jules relies on most in life despite the ongoing demands of his career. She describes their relationship as one built on friendship, loyalty and respect, developed over years of friendship and growing love.

“The beauty about us and what’s probably given us such longevity is that it has remained very familiar the whole way through,” she says. “I think with those same strong foundations we have been able to navigate our way through the wobbly, weird, overwhelming parts of life.

“He also made it very easy for me because he didn’t get caught up in his own hype, didn’t get caught up in fame or the attention, none of that. He just remained himself.”

Guy and Jules Sebastian during lockdown last year.

However, Jules writes that Guy’s absence on local gigs and world tours, when sons Hudson and Archer were very young, did lead to a major emotional meltdown, mostly fuelled by fear and guilt that she could not parent her children well enough by herself.

She wrote the chapter for all the single mums and career women with families struggling to do it all perfectly. The chapter talks about silencing the critic in your head – it’s your voice after all – and not attempting to balance every competing demand.

But she also talks candidly about how a stable childhood with a stay-at-home mum wasn’t an ideal springboard for life as a working mother.

“Both our mums stayed at home to raise their kids, taking on their motherly and wifely duties with great pride. It didn’t occur to me until I was in the thick of it, but I was struggling without the history of a role model in my life who was both a conscientious mother and an aspirational career woman – with minimal help on the home front,” she writes.

How did her mum, Margaret, and her family and friends take to being written about with such honesty?

“My family knew I was writing it and that I was never, ever going to put anything in it unless they had read it and approved,” she says. “I was actually the most nervous for my mum to read this book. She was the first person I sent it to and I kept calling her asking if she’d finished it. She was a gatekeeper because if she didn’t like it, I didn’t know what I was going to do. You can’t have your mum not like your book.”

Jules is also in constant communication with Guy to keep in sync with her life partner amid a demanding schedule: “I think that is the only way, to talk about it. And truly, Guy and I are never not communicating (although) not perfectly, not all the time.

“But I think, in such a big life with so many moving parts and so many people involved in lots of decisions, communicating is all you have really. You have to be on the same boat, sailing in the same direction, otherwise you’re just going around in circles.”

Guy and Jules in 2018.

On raising her children amid the public attention of her own career and that of one of Australia’s best-known singer songwriters, Jules says protecting her sons is part of that ongoing conversation with Guy.

“We definitely have a line in the sand when it comes to the kids,” she says. “We want them to be kids, we want them to have the most normal life they can possibly have and be like every other kid.

“I feel like we do a pretty good job in terms of, I’m a mum just like all the other mums doing all the pick-ups, drop-offs, school sports, after-school stuff. We don’t make a fuss of ourselves. We try to keep it as level and normal as humanly possible.”

Of course, there is no escaping the chat generated by new albums and tours, or having a highly recognisable face, as they discovered when son Hudson came home from kindergarten and breathlessly asked Guy: “Are you Guy Sebastian?”

“We were like, ‘ooh they’re on to us’,” Jules says. “He was like ‘why is everyone asking are you Guy Sebastian’s son? I’m just gonna make sure you are the Guy Sebastian’.”

With another arena tour of Australia coming up in November for Guy, the family has learned to plan carefully to ensure he can spend the maximum possible time with Jules and the children.

Australian tours are a little easier because Guy can often come home in between concert dates, or the family can take a holiday to be nearby.

“There’s definitely a plan put in place,” she says. “It’s not just us at home being lonely, it’s him, too. He misses his kids and his wife, so it’s important for him to have that connection back to us, as well.”

After a year spent in COVID lockdown, togetherness has not been a problem of late. “Listen, we have had our cups filled up and running over with the amount of time we spent together last year. So maybe there’ll be less planning this year,” Jules laughs.

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